It’s summer, let’s party!

Summer, cocktails, bacardi – a great way to have a special family evening as part of a sponsored shop with Collective Bias.

Would you believe I actually enjoyed the shopping trip? For once I went on my own. No small helpers wanting things, no arguments in the aisles, no losing children when you turn your back – shopping can be fun. And I got to take my time, buy what I wanted and bargain hunt while I was at it – all recorded in the Google+ album. Morrisons is our largest local supermarket, but because I have to drive (it’s probably about two miles away?) I don’t seem to go all that often. Every time I do I remember how good the deals are though…

It was a glorious weekend. Sunday afternoon Big and Tim were having some father daughter quality time so I took the younger three to the beach. It was the perfect afternoon – icecream, sun, sand.

Then we came home, and it was Small’s turn to cook. He’d chosen sausage and egg baps, a good start to his independent cooking career and an excellent choice for a light family meal. As he was occupied with that, Big decided she’d get her cocktail learning started, and we researched mojitos. I’d looked them up on the Bacardi website before I went, obviously, to check the required ingredients, but turned out that wikipedia is very informative.

That’s mint fresh from the garden by the way, homegrown cocktail ingredients, how cool is that?

It turns out that spending the evening with your kids, cooking and having cocktails is a really fun way to spend your time.

Big whipped up a mean mojito. Cool that in five years or so she’ll be able to drink it – by then she should have a full repertoire 😉

I remember cocktails from university. They were never like this. We drank something called a toxic waste, that had coke and blue curacao (sp?) and something either yellow or green – it used to fizz up into foam and spill over the side of the plastic glass and then set solid onto the bar if you didn’t drink it fast enough.

I’m not what you’d call a class act really. Can you tell? I’m not a cocktail dress wearer or a cocktail drinker, though I remember very fondly the time I arrived at home ed camp at Kessingland and Layla pressed a glass of pimms complete with strawberries into my hand. After a five hour drive and before putting a tent up it was just what the doctor ordered.

So cocktails speak to me of fun times, and I’m hoping we can rerun this week’s fun evening maybe with a few extra family members as we all get more confident with the mixing or the cooking.

Small’s first dinner worked out well. Sausage patties made by squeezing out the sausage meat and then frying them, add a fried egg (I did that bit). Burger rolls, a salad and you’re ready to go.

Well, once you’ve added the cocktails in too 😉

And the family that cooks together, eats together. It’s good to enjoy family time learning, laughing and eating. And for once, I remembered to get a picture of everyone together.

Comments

That was a lovely post to read Jax and it’s great that your kids got so involved. I remember having a cocktail party when Belle was about seven years old once, and leaving her temporarily in charge of the bar. Big mistake! One of my guests had to have a two hour nap after drinking one of her concoctions!

The in thing to drink when I was at college was a “top shelf” which consisted of one shot of each of the things on the top shelf of the bar mixed in a pint glass. Although I watched a number of people try to drink one it never appealed to me so I never tried.

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